Distant love

Fermina and Florintino have broken it off, and the arc of their romance reminds me of many internet relationships of modern day. The two of them communicated nearly exclusively via letters, even though they lived in the same town. Then when Fermina moved away, they continued their correspondence for several years, eventually agreeing to marry--all …

Dual mind

Writing takes love, self confidence, optimism, and hope in order to complete anything. But editing, I am coming to believe, takes hate, pessimism, and self-disgust. A writer has to be two people, two halves isolated from each other--the writing half is an excited person full of energy and love for the words they are creating …

I can’t stop writing

Which may seem like a good problem to have, except I'm supposed to be editing. Since I finished my novella, I've written five short stories, and just signed up to write another... and I've only edited, partially, one chapter of my novel. I know I need to focus on editing, or the writing was for …

I keep laughing

You know it's a funny book when just thinking about it throughout the day makes you burst out laughing. Me trying to describe it would not do justice to its hilarity, you just have to read it yourself. But... something about this kind of character is just so amusing--the just smart enough to think they …

Language is neat

The 'sentence' in that caption, is perfectly clear to young people today (and getting-old types like myself, too), even without the context of the picture. Yet, as little as 20 years ago it would be complete nonsense, and 20 years from now it will probably rejoin the incomprehensible. But we also have classics written hundreds …